[FADCA] Re: Fw: <No Subject>

[Doug Christ]

As the Communications Officer for the DeSoto County Emergency Management
Department, I have had numerous talks with John Fleming of FDEM. The current
ESATCOM system, which there is one located at every EOC in each county, has
a serial port just sitting there collecting dust. I can't remember the
connection speed, either 9600 or 19.2, but John indicated to me that this
could be used to pass traffic with two years ago. The late Gary Arnold was
trying to set it up to pass packet type connections for BBS style forwarding
but was having difficulties.

The entire state used these ports until they added TCP/IP ports to the DIU's
at each site last year. As far as the TCP/IP goes, yes, there is a satellite
based TCP/IP network all over the state as well. I'm not sure if we would
allowed to utilize this part network as it is used for backup communications
to every EOC.

Is anyone interested in this approach? Unless the satellite dish is stripped
off by high winds, this is a very reliable method to transfer messages to
the FDEM.

Once again, this is the mixing of amateur and commercial modes together. I'm
just pointing out the different tools available to us.

Doug/KN4YT